Paddy lost two fingers on a scaffolding accident three years ago. He slipped off of the fourth tier, caught his fingers on the third, and as his body fell, the weight ripped his pointer and middle fingers off at the last knuckle. Now, I watch him roll a joint between his hands.
"Irish dope," he says, but when he says it, it sounds like "Irash."
Watching him sickens me. His hands move like regular hands, his three remaining fingers on his right hand deft, taking care of the business that his lost ones used to. It makes my stomach turn. His nubs are touching the weed. I picture him falling, his two fingers jammed between the metal scaffolding and squirming, trying to find his fist, trying to remember where they belong, recognizing their inadequacy in a world of division.
We smoke the joint. We get stoned and I finish mixing the mortar. It's an industrial mixer, heavy grade shit. I dump it into a wheel barrel. Paddy cleans his tools and whistles. His right hand holds a trowel in the exact definition of the word grasping. We lift the wheel barrel into his van and drive along the ocean to a half-built house on a hill. It's 16 degrees Celsius, the type of weather you can never associate with loss, no matter how small. We take the wheel barrel out and I ask him where the mortar is going.
"Up on the roof" he says, "Da chimney."
I look at the chimney, three stories up. Paddy gathers a ladder from the side of the house and I start shoveling the mortar into buckets.
"Ya bring 'em up, and I'll spill 'em on," Paddy says. He says, "Fook I'm stoned."
I carry the first bucket up. I reach the roof, hoist the bucket on the rafters and begin climbing them to get to the chimney. I'm stoned and shake a little, what can I say? When I get to the top I straddle the roof, a clear division of my body down the center of the building, the 60 pound bucket of mortar in front of me, resting on the roof lats. Paddy settles against whatever he can and I lift the bucket and tip a decent sized portion on his hawk. He pivots around the chimney with his good hand, the mangled one reaches for his trowel. My legs buckle, the wind moves, Paddy squints against the sun, the ocean slams waves in any direction, a defiant individual. I tip the bucket on his hawk whenever he swipes the last remaining bit away. I go down for another bucket, and another. The ladder seems like it's slipping with each one-handed rung I grab. I put concrete blocks underneath the legs to steady it. I want to pour the mortar on its legs, sit in the sun and watch the ocean while it settles in, cementing the ladder to ground. Instead I carry another bucket, and another bucket, and then a final one. Each time I reach the top I think, "For Christ's sake, it's only a chimney."
With the last bit of mortar up, Paddy lights a cigarette and gives me one. I lean over to take the light from his outstretched hand, his left, his one remaining full hand. We sit on the roof and look at the water and the sun beginning its slow plane down. I imagine barbaric Irishmen dreaming of the hiss it made as it plunged into the ocean. They must have wondered why they couldn't hear it. They must have wondered why they couldn't witness the water dripping off of it as it rose each morning.
Paddy is smoking. My legs are on either side of the roof, my body 50-50.
"I'm afraid of heights," I say calmly. Everything else is calm, why not.
"I used to be," Paddy offers. "Yes sir, I sure used to be." He stands up, balancing on nothing but his own balance. He puts his hawk and trowel on the top of the chimney. He lifts his arms in the air. He smokes his cigarette, looks at it, looks at his hands, looks back at it, watches at the smoke trace away, sees how things can leave, even if they were once a part of us.
"I can still feel my fingers," he says. "Sometimes they're there and the rest of my hand wants to use them." He starts to laugh but stops.
"I'm afraid of heights," I say again. I am very calm about the whole thing. Paddy puts his right hand near his mouth and sucks once quickly on his nubs.
"I can still feel my fingers," He says. "I'm no longer a whole person," he says. Nothing is happening but us on the roof and the ocean acting mysterious.
"I can still remember them," he says. "I am blessed," he says. He says, "I can still feel them."
Sean Santa is a writer from Cleveland living in Washington DC.